It would seem kind of pointless that a supplemental feature is EN-friendly but not the main films. But hey, fingers crossed.

I don't know this as gospel but that COULD mean an interview with someone in english, like Brownlow for example, with french subs but not that the french original is subbed in english

This is not just an extra, it's the book and being a book, it won't be subtitled in French.
I'd suppose thus it might rather be a push from Gaumont to do what they did with their Papatakis set, meaning a set which is very English-friendly, down to the written material.

Of course, this doesn't mean all the extras will be, it could even happen that this description is incorrect. But of it is correct, and that the book will be bi-lingual, it would be stupid not to have the whole set being as english-friendly as possible.

L.A. wrote:In November we shall see. Also, I understand that La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc should look superb.

From what I recall, yes it should. But of course, it needs to be properly encoded.

"It appears that Gaumont created a very nice remaster for this lovely film, but as it is presented on the Blu-ray its dynamic range is unconvincing. Basically, the gamma levels are off and as a result there are different parts of the film that look uncharacteristically flat. Now, there are certain adjustments that can be done on different equipment to partially restore gamma levels, but the end result isn't always optimal. I don't know if the current gamma settings were introduced when the Blu-ray was encoded or when the restored master was finalized, but as soon as I placed the disc in my player I was able to see the flatness that is noted above. (To get an idea what type of discrepancy can emerge between improper and proper gamma levels, see Gaumont's presentation and Criterion's presentation of the recent restoration of Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows)."

I asked Eclair myself directly about this. They answered me the following :

"The choice of levels, especially black, is an editorial choice not done by Eclair but by the customer on a movie-by-movie basis. This choice is acted in our projection room, where one of our colorist do the grading under the customer's supervision. The colorist brings his experience and culture, in a way that 2 colorists would not always have the same approach for a given movie.
This work is then reported on the video version, where we try to maintain of the original intention to the small screen and its more limited dynamic. A specificity of our chain of work is that our movie colorist supervises the video too, and thus preserves the levels, while video colorists tend to put black levels at 0 by "culture" (often because TV channels could otherwise reject the master).
One remark regarding compression problems : it is true that some discs performed from our restorations have been disrespectfully compressed by other subcontractors. We let the customer know, because in such cases, while we don't control the whole chain of work, the operations performed below can have significant consequences on how our work will look."

What's interesting is that this makes the comparison with Elevator to the Gallows quite moot :
- it means that Criterion willingly modified the restoration to re-adjust the black levels and increase the restoration greyscale dynamic. I don't mind myself, because I prefer blacks at 0 and whites at 255, but it goes what professionnals accept as being the usual 35mm film dynamic in projection. So all considered, it might be perceived as superfluous modifications.
- Elevator has an incorrect encode which most likely isn't coming from the restoration itself but the compression. Eclair does most of Gaumont's encode, and it's doubtful they did the problematic Malle titles' encode (The Lovers also had huge issues).

It also means it's a very conscious choice from Eclair and Gaumont (which can also be found in a few Eclair / Pathé restorations), and not a mistake introduced somewhere along the process.

In a similar case, Criterion's use of Gaumont's restoration for Dreyer's Joan of Arc also is through a re-adjustment of the contrast.

Gamma refers to the shape of the entire luminance curve, from black to white. Changing gamma can 'remap' black/white, but it can't bring back detail that has already been lost -- like details in dark areas of the frame that simply don't exist on so many of these French discs. The Criterion Elevator to the Gallows is definitely not a gamma correction. Joan of Arc probably is.

And while I agree that every frame doesn't need blacks at 0 and whites at 255, these problematic restorations go too far the other way. It's like they don't even use a waveform monitor when grading.

While I agree with the overall feeling that the resulting flatness can be problematic (I myself prefer a more contrasted aspect, even if possibly just by force of habit), I argue two things :
- if these levels are willingly decided at the restoration level by Eclair, I'm unsure if there are any details lost in these darker areas to begin with. There are many restorations with blacks at 0 where these darker areas show no detail there. Having them at, say, 7 instead of 0 won’t change that. That’s what happens with Joan of Arc for instance : Criterion used the Gaumont restoration and just re-adjusted the contrast (or the gamma), but flat black areas were flat grey areas, and won’t show more detail on the Criterion disc. Yet, because it uses the full video range, it won’t be picked up. And indeed, Svet didn’t pick it up and gave the PQ 5/5, but these darker areas won’t have any more shadow details than the Gaumont release.
- Many of the issues visible on the Gaumont release of Elevator to the Gallows are not a result of the lighter gamma / contrast, but of the encode being unable to handle it correctly. Eclair has produced other light-looking restorations, but most of them aren’t encoded as poorly, and the result is thus much less debatable (Les tontons flingueurs, typically). I’d also believe that Criterion hasn’t done things very differently than for Joan of Arc (AR aside, of course), but I don’t have the Criterion to compare, and blu-ray.com caps don’t match, so I’m not sure.

The new Tontons flingueurs restoration is all the more an interesting example because it's now lighter than the past restoration (though I haven't wrote down how low the blacks go), but while the older restoration was quite well received, the new one reveals more shadow detail because it seems the older one simply was too contrasted. Blacks were rich, but they were too rich.

Now, I'm not particularly educated on this part of PQ, so can't go deeper in that, but I felt these info would be interesting for people here.

Obviously I dont know exactly what Eclair is doing, but just because it's a conscious decision doesnt make it right either.

See for example Ritrovata, who apart from their colour grading, also apparently apply a Film Projection LUT to all of their restorations. The reasoning behind that seems to be to emulate film projection but in a digital space (either DCP or home video/blu ray). But it seems really obvious that whatever LUT Ritrovata is using doesnt seem to properly account for the fact that the film projection workflow/chain actually increases contrast and limits dynamic range along the way, and the end result to a viewer in a theatre would not look anything at all like the weak/raised blacks you get on Ritrovata's restorations in the digital space (again either as a DCP or home video/blu ray).

Last edited by nitin on Tue Apr 03, 2018 6:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's not only conscious but done on a case-by-case basis, ending up with what I feel is a more organic result, hence why I wanted to make the distinction.

But I agree with you : it's not better because of this consciousness (I certainly didn't ask Eclair what they were doing for no reason !), and obviously, the parallel with Ritrovata came to me very quickly.

It would be interesting to hear which french blu rays Eclair consider to respect their intentions via proper encoding and which they do not. I suspect they would consider most of Pathe's output to be faithful and Gaumont's to be more hit and miss.

The way they answered me let me suppose they won't say exactly which discs they consider problematic.

nitin wrote:I suspect they would consider most of Pathe's output to be faithful and Gaumont's to be more hit and miss.

I'm not so sure about this split.
If this is indeed a case-by-case basis based on the customer's request, I'd suppose rather that Pathé are asking for "pure" blacks while Gaumont don't, and that the discs Eclair consider unfaithful are ones like Elevator, The Lovers or others where you see stuff like chroma issues and banding all over. But I don't think Le mystère Picasso, for instance, is unfaithful.